In materials science and biology, optical near-field microscopies enable spatial resolutions beyond the diffraction limit, but they cannot provide the atomic-scale imaging capabilities of electron microscopy. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is a microscopy technique in which a beam of electrons is transmitted through a specimen. An image is formed from the interaction of the electrons and the specimen on an imaging device, such as a CCD camera. Despite the advances made in TEM techniques, there is a need in the art for improved methods and novel systems for ultrafast electron microscopy.